What's the problem? We think it can be summed up with the phrase
"so open-minded your brains fall out":Think you’ve got a prediction for when and how the world will end? Get in line.
A caravan of RVs is now touring the country to warn people about the end of the world (they say it will happen May 21), but they're hardly the first ones to embark on such a mission.
Throughout time, and across continents and belief systems, humankind has dished out enough end dates to fill a doomsday menu.
The backgrounds of the people who serve them up may differ, as might the details of what will unfold, but the general apocalyptic worldview is nothing original, says Lorenzo DiTommaso, an associate professor of religion at Concordia University in Montréal, Quebec and author of the forthcoming book, “The Architecture of Apocalypticism.”
“It’s a philosophy that explains time, space and human existence,” DiTommaso says.
If we, as a people, are not men and women enough to finally say "Enough with the nonsense!" then - bring it on - we should root for the planet to end, rather than subject future generations to such delusions.
What's the problem? We think it can be summed up with the phrase "so open-minded your brains fall out":
What's great about the entire bent-brained mystic contingent is that they are convinced life will come to a crashing end by some mysterious supernatural event -- based on a Mayan narrative or a Biblical one or some other goofy-headed notion -- but the reality-based reports habitat destruction (ours and the food-chain's) are dismissed as poppycock
ReplyDeleteThat's where you're wrong:
ReplyDeleteBoth are examples of malthusianism.
To think we're willingly destroying our planet is as kooky as thinking we're willingly bringing about the return of Jesus for the end of the world. Both represent an unwarranted I'm-morally-superior-to-you attitude that must be stopped. (As I put up the other day, why is it - if global warming is real - most of what we're asked to do is prove how virtuous in feeling about the planet we are?)
Anyway, both positions are just two sides of the same crazy coin.
Yet there's documented evidence of habitat destruction. It's irrefutable.
ReplyDeleteCan't say that about Revelations
We can bicker about whether it's happening "willingly" but there's no lack of proof that the habitat of humans, plants and animals is being changed to make vast landscapes less hospitable to the less adaptable.
Jim,
ReplyDeletethe habitat of humans, plants and animals is being changed
It's always being changed - and it always will - but to declare that change is necessarily bad is ignorant. Before man came along, species went extinct, plates shifted, some places were cold that were hot, and vice versa - it's what happens, Jim.
Malthusianism blames us, rather than recognizing that reality.
Crack--
ReplyDeleteToxic waste dumps are not part of the natural cycle of things. It's new that rivers get sterilized by the runoff from industrial farming. It's not a myth that sloppy use of pesticides and anti-bacterial agents and antibiotics are creating hyper-resistant bugs, bacteria and viruses.
Maybe it's just my ignorant liberal judgmentalism that thinks that the Chernobyl disaster was bad. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#Suggested_long-range_effects
Or maybe it's not just "what happens" -- it's what people do.
Tectonic plates still shift but none of them have created a pesticide-resistant bedbug
Yeah, but you're still framing it as nothing changes - that bug's resistant NOW - it won't be forever. And, yes, mistakes happen, but don't suggest corruption unless there is corruption.
ReplyDeleteMan isn't a cancer on the planet. If anything, we're it's victims, able to be killed - easily - at any time.
you're still framing it as nothing changes
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I'm not. What I've framed is that humans have destroyed habitat beyond what nature can adapt to as quickly as need be -- if, that's IF, we want to work off of the basic assumption that the climate zones we have work for us where they are, that disease is best handled with a minimum of drugs, and food is safe to eat.
There will always be environmental changes-- notions like invasive weed species being relative, for example, relative to which millennia you refer to -- but what's been happening specifically since the Industrial Age is human-induced change (not just climate disruption) of a speed that natural mechanisms cannot adapt to at a pace comfortable for the status quo.
but don't suggest corruption unless there is corruption.
I'm suggesting idiocy, negligence, callousness and a cavalier treatment of habitat. Sometimes that is a result of corruption, but it doesn't have to have been.
There was a time I would, but now, I will never argue against man's "idiocy, negligence, callousness and a cavalier treatment" of anything.
ReplyDeleteYou win this round, Batman.
More on Chernobyl for your consideration, though.
ReplyDeleteSee, it's not all bad. And you have to watch what you take from Wikipedia:
They've got an agenda.
Quite useful material, thanks so much for the post.
ReplyDelete